India's War

by Srinath Raghavan

  The attack on Malaya began a few hours before the bombing of Hong Kong on 8 December 1941. The convoy carrying the invading force had set out from Hainan Island four days earlier. Lieutenant General Yamashita Tomoyuki’s Twenty-Fifth Army, comprising some 17,000 combat troops, moved in serene waters screened by a slew of destroyers and cruisers. A professional soldier of common origins, Yamashita had steadily worked his way up the chain of command, embracing with equal eagerness the principles of Bushido and Blitzkrieg. Indeed, as head of the Japanese military mission to Germany in late 1940, he had closely studied the German advance into Western Europe and grasped the psychological impact of rapid and powerful movements combining armour, artillery and air power. Although Yamashita’s main force would land in Thailand, he chose not to waste any time in fortifying its positions and aimed to strike south immediately.

  Two regiments of the 5th Division would land on the south-eastern coast of Thailand at Singora and Patani and dash into the Kedah province of Malaya. A third regiment, from the 18th Division, would land at Kota Bharu and push its way into Kelantan. On both axes of advance, the first objectives were the British airfields. Yamashita knew that his force was smaller in numbers and his logistical links slender. Yet he was encouraged both by intelligence reports that the bulk of the British forces in Malaya were poorly trained and by his own dismissive assessment of the fighting prowess of the Indian units.21 Notwithstanding the racial stereotyping, Yamashita’s assessment and plans were not off-beam.

  British plans for the defence of Malaya were mired in wishful thinking. Given Churchill’s reluctance to commit enough troops for the defence of the entire peninsula, the default plan was to rely on air power. The chiefs of staff as well as the commander-in-chief of the Far East, Brooke-Popham, knew that the RAF did not have adequate aircraft. Yet the construction of airbases proceeded apace and continually outstripped RAF resources. By the autumn of 1941, eleven airfields were available – but only nine were occupied by the eve of war. What’s more, the sprinkling of airbases across Malaya resulted in ground forces being deployed for their protection in places that were thoroughly unsuitable from an operational standpoint. For instance, the aerodrome in Alor Star compelled the deployment of troops at Jitra, while a far better defensive position was available further south at Gurun. Similarly, the airbases near Kota Bharu were plonked on the east coast and vulnerable to an attack from the sea.22 In any event, the effort to build up airfields was rendered futile by London’s refusal to send top-of-the-range fighters, resulting in the air defence of Malaya being entrusted to obsolete, painfully vulnerable planes.

  The ground plan for the defence of Malaya was equally muddled. For the best part of 1941, British planners toyed with the idea of a pre-emptive strike into southern Thailand, aimed at forestalling a Japanese attack on that country. The origins of Operation Matador stretched back to 1937 when the idea of ‘forward defence’ was first mooted. In August 1940, the chiefs of staff set the ball rolling by agreeing to consider the military advantages of a move into Thailand. Six months passed before Brooke-Popham sent them a sketchy plan indicating various lines up to which British forces could advance. If they went all the way up to Jumbhom, they could seize and deny to the enemy all six airfields in southern Thailand. At a minimum, they should capture the major port of Singora and annihilate the Japanese forces as they sought to land on the beaches.

  This seemingly sensible plan was dogged by a couple of problems. For a start, the Malaya Command did not have enough troops. It needed at least two more brigades to undertake the advance into Thailand as well as hold the defensive positions in Malaya. More importantly, a pre-emptive strike would entail the violation of Thailand’s neutrality. London was unwilling to oblige on either count. Although the chiefs of staff underscored the strategic advantages of Operation Matador, the prime minister wanted to stay in step with the Americans and avoid complicating their negotiations with Japan. This was not surprising. Churchill had shown a similar sensitivity to American views on violating the neutrality of Iran – an area where the United States had no direct interests in play. This effectively ruled out Matador, though the chain of command from London to Malaya persuaded itself that the plan could still be set in motion after Japan’s aggressive designs became as clear as daylight.23

  The strategic dithering over Matador impinged on tactical plans as well. To prevent the defensive positions in Kedah from being outflanked, the Malaya Command was keen to cut the road linking Patani in Thailand with Kroh in Malaya. The idea was to pre-emptively occupy a position – the Ledge – about 23 miles north of Kroh. Since London and Brooke-Popham refused to rule out Matador, the commanders down the chain continued to plan on sending a column – Krohcol – to capture the Ledge. They were entirely oblivious of the fact that this too would violate Thai neutrality. Unsurprisingly, when the Japanese struck, the plans for Krohcol and Matador remained stapled in the files of the Malaya Command. And no other plans existed which would have allowed for anything more than an inert, passive defence, leaving the initiative to Japan.

  The fact that such unreal assumptions underpinning the defence of Malaya went unchallenged attested to the weaknesses in the British chain of command. The sixty-three-year-old Brooke-Popham had been governor of Kenya for three years before being recalled to service as commander-in-chief of Far East Command in November 1940. There was a significant gap between his grand title and his actual powers: neither the Royal Navy nor the civilian bureaucracy was under his control. The General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Malaya, Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, had taken over only in April 1941. ‘General Percival is a nice, good man who began life as a school-master’, noted the visiting minister of state, Duff Cooper. ‘I am sometimes tempted to wish he had remained one.’24 This was at once incorrect and unfair. Percival had never been a school-master, though he had taught at staff colleges. More pertinently, he was sharp, diligent and experienced. Percival’s principal flaws were his inability to assert himself and his tendency to shy away from confrontation.

  These were compounded by his fraught relationship with the commander of the 3rd Indian Corps, Lieutenant General Heath. Percival had never commanded a corps and had spent most of his career as a staff officer. Heath was not only senior to him in service, but had led the 5th Indian Division to victory in East Africa and had recently been knighted. While Heath resented serving under a junior and less distinguished officer, Percival wheeled around the trolley of prejudices held by British officers towards their colleagues in the Indian army. If it was any consolation, Percival’s relations with the commander of the 8th Australian Division were no better.

  Heath had under his command the 9th and 11th Indian Infantry Divisions. Both were peppered with difficulties – problems that underlay the disastrous performance of the Indian units in the face of a Japanese attack. To begin with, there was a serious shortage of experienced soldiers. The massive expansion of the Indian army, while impressive on paper, resulted in a substantial dilution of skills and standards. The pre-war regular units were milked of their trained officers and VCOs, NCOs and soldiers, who went on to form the nuclei of the new units. The latter in turn were milked to raise yet more units. In consequence, the new units rolled out by the Indian army had few seasoned officers or soldiers and were packed with raw recruits and green officers. The war diary of 5/11th Sikh noted, for example, that the unit had joined the 9th Division in August 1941 ‘having been thoroughly milked, 450 recruits and 6 BOs [British officers] unable to speak Urdu having joined a few weeks prior to embarkation’. Then too, the battalion lost another thirty experienced men to a newly formed machine-gun unit.25

  Second, as with Indian forces elsewhere, the units sent out to Malaya were woefully under-equipped. This stemmed from the fact that the rate of expansion of the Indian army was not matched by the provision of weapons and equipment by Britain. Indeed, most units deployed in Malaya did not receive their full equipment until November 1941. For instance, the 1/13th Frontier Force R
ifles of the 9th Division received the standard light machine gun only weeks before fighting broke out and had little time to get used to the new weapon. Similarly, most artillery regiments did not get their main 25-pounder field gun until very late in the day. The Malaya Command’s helpful advice to units facing serious shortages was that they ‘must constantly agitate until they get them’.26

  Third, and related to the above, was the lack of training. In the absence of equipment, training naturally took a back seat. But the divisional, corps and Malaya commands also bore responsibility for the neglect of training. Even in 1941 the Malaya Command hardly functioned as a wartime formation. John Baptist Crasta, an NCO from southern India, reached Malaya in April 1941 and was pleasantly surprised at the conditions in the garrison.

  Life for the troops in Malaya left nothing to be desired. Electrified huts were provided for accommodation. There was plenty of water and good scenery. Food was ample and wholesome. Beer and liquor were available in moderate quantities in canteens, and other amusements such as camp cinemas and picnics were arranged. Discipline was not too exacting.

  Even in the topmost circles, war was not expected in Malaya.27

  Commanders and staffs at various levels made little effort to study the conditions under which their troops would confront the enemy. This was especially problematic because whatever little the Indian troops had picked up pertained to fighting in the desert. They were entirely untrained to fight in the jungle or countryside thick with cultivated rubber plantations but linked by roads.

  The only formation which had any clue of these conditions was the 12th Indian Infantry Brigade. The brigade had been shipped out of India in August 1939 and stationed in Singapore. The officer commanding one of the battalions of the brigade – 2nd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders – Lieutenant Colonel Ian Stewart, took the lead in training his battalion in Johore. In a series of exercises held in 1939–40, the Argylls familiarized themselves with the sights, sounds and smells of the jungle. They taught themselves the tactical actions best suited to this environment: all-round defence, aggressive patrolling, flanking moves. These methods trickled into the rest of the 12th Indian Brigade – but no further.

  The brigade was attached directly to the Malaya Command and did not operate with the other Indian formations. Further, the Malaya Command had scant interest in Stewart’s attempts. Not until autumn 1940 did the Malaya Command prepare the Tactical Notes for Malaya 1940. Although it drew on the 12th Indian Brigade’s experience, the pamphlet was amateurish. It did more harm than good by giving currency to myths about Japanese tactical weaknesses and encouraging wrong notions about ease of operations such as withdrawal. GHQ India also prepared a training pamphlet titled Notes on Forest Warfare which was sent to Indian units in Malaya from early 1941. None of this was of much use, owing to the lassitude of Malaya Command in drawing up a serious programme of individual and collective training for its units and formations – let alone creating a theatre-level training school. Even the limited training envisaged for the Indian units was scuppered by the need to prepare defensive positions and other tasks at hand.28

  Indian troops in Malaya were thus inexperienced, under-equipped and ill-trained. The upshot was a series of debacles in the face of a determined Japanese onslaught.

  At 2100 hours on the night of 7 December 1941, Brooke-Popham was informed that RAF aircraft had sighted the Japanese force at sea and had been shot at. It was too late to launch Operation Matador and make for Singora. However, instead of launching the Krohcol to secure the Ledge, Brooke-Popham ordered Percival only to postpone Matador. The Japanese, he felt, had not yet committed a ‘definite act of hostility’. He wanted an aerial reconnaissance the next morning to confirm Japanese intentions. Just before midnight, the Japanese task force anchored off Kota Bharu. Two hours later, the assault began.29

  As the Japanese waded their way through heavy surf, the pillboxes on the beach crackled into life. The 8th Indian Brigade (9th Division) pinned the attackers down with heavy fire. The Japanese commander, Tsuji Masanobu, reported that ‘our men lying on the beach, half in and half out of water, could not raise their heads’. By daybreak, the attackers – ‘creeping forward like moles’ – managed to inch their way towards the defences.

  Suddenly one of our men covered a loophole with his body and a group of moles sprang to their feet in a spurt of sand and rushed into the enemy’s fortified position. Hand grenades flew and bayonets flashed, amid the sound of war cries and calls of distress, in a cloud of black smoke the enemy’s frontline was captured.30

  Having punched a hole in the defences, the Japanese found the going easier. The 8th Brigade was stretched thin on the ground. Two of its battalions were deployed behind to protect the airbases near the coastline. The other two battalions manned a long line of pillboxes strung along the beach with machine-gun nests deployed on a line to the rear. The Japanese infiltrated these lines in small groups, isolated and attacked the pillboxes, and quickly headed inland to capture the airbases.

  At nightfall, the divisional commander, Major General Barstow, ordered the brigade to pull back if threatened with destruction. The withdrawal through the swampy terrain and in heavy rain proved confused, arduous and hazardous. The Japanese, having taken the airfields, sought to block and cut down the retreating Indian forces. A battalion of Hyderabad State Infantry practically disintegrated: its commanding officer was apparently killed by his own troops when he tried to restore a modicum of order. Confusion was compounded by fear and panic. Rumours coursed through the countryside that the brigade commander had been captured. As the Japanese pressed hard in pursuit, the Indian units had no option but to head south with the minimum loss of men, materiel and morale. By 12 December 1941, Kelantan was almost entirely in Japanese hands. The movement of Indian forces thereafter was ‘analogous to that of a man walking back step by step while still facing the tiger with a sword in hand’.31

  The fate of Malaya, however, turned on the defenders at Kedah. The Japanese landed unopposed at Singora and Patani and swiftly made their way south. Brooke-Popham learnt of the landing by 0930 hours on 8 December. By the time he made up his mind to launch the Krohcol and the order filtered down to the unit, it was 1500 hours. No sooner had the Krohcol crossed the border than it was engaged by the Thai police, who astonishingly managed to block its advance. Another twenty-four hours passed before the column neared the Ledge – only to be shot at by Japanese tanks that had beaten them to the goal. Even as the Krohcol fell back, the rest of the 11th Division scampered to take up defensive positions.

  The abortion of Operation Matador had unhinged the division and dented its morale. The torrential rain did little to cheer the troops. In these circumstances, the division was ordered to hold hastily prepared defensive positions at Jitra. Poorly planned and sited, these defences stretched over a 12-mile front covering jungle, paddy fields and plantations. The defensive dug-outs were sited too far apart to support each other by fire. Worse, the defences were shallow – incapable of absorbing a major blow and bouncing back with a punch. Nowhere did the line have a depth of more than a mile and a half.

  A Japanese reconnaissance detachment of about 500 men and a dozen tanks moved south to probe the British defences. Joined by Tsuji, the detachment was ambushed by a screening force of the 11th Division. But when the Japanese regrouped the screening troops fell back. Although the defenders blew up bridges to delay the Japanese, they seemed most reluctant to stand and fight. ‘We now understood the fighting capacity of the enemy’, noted Tsuji. ‘The only things we had to fear were the quantity of munitions he had and the thoroughness of his demolitions.’ Tsuji conveyed his impressions to Yamashita and got the go-ahead for a ‘driving charge’ on the defences of Jitra.32

  The 11th Division’s commander, Major General Murray-Lyon, deployed two battalions – the 1/14th Punjab and the 2/1st Gurkha Rifles – north of the main line of defences. On the afternoon of 11 December, the Japanese tanks, followed by infantry in trucks,
tore through the Punjabis. Most of the troops had never even seen a tank before and the Japanese charge shattered the battalion. As Captain Mohan Singh, a company commander, recalled: ‘Men were running helter skelter. The Japanese tanks had broken in and had created havoc, ammunition trucks were on fire, bombardment was heavy … The Battalion had dispersed, in utter confusion. It was a case of – “Everyone for himself”.’33 Unfortunately, it was neither the first nor the last battalion to suffer this fate. In any event, the Japanese infantry now began infiltrating the Gurkhas’ position. The forward companies of the Gurkhas fought literally to the knife, but were cut off from the rest of the battalion and attacked by the tanks. By the end of the day, two battalions of the 11th Division had ceased to exist.34

  Later that evening, Japanese patrols picked out gaps in the main defensive position at Jitra. Around midnight, their infantry and tanks fell on the division, infiltrating the gaps, outflanking the positions and attacking isolated sections of the defences. Unnerved by the speed of the Japanese thrusts and the scale of his own losses, Murray-Lyon was minded to withdraw the entire division by the following noon. On Percival’s orders, he stuck it out for a few more hours before disengaging from the advancing enemy and falling back to Gurun. The retreat turned into a rout as the Japanese snipped the communications between various units and used roadblocks and ambushes to devastating effect. The 2/9th Jat was caught in one such ambush just before dawn on 12 December. ‘In the melee which ensued in the darkness’, the brigade war diary noted, ‘the battalion became disintegrated among the buildings, drains and slit trenches of the camp and a sauve qui peut ensued’. The stragglers had not got very far when the men’s nerves began to tell: they began ‘seeing things’ and the cry ‘Dushman’ (enemy) led to the further disintegration of the survivors.35